Member

That's a POV I guess.
Economic hardships in a developed world, where nobody would starve to death, but saving lives vs god knows what consequences of embracing the virus, because it could possibly be better for the economy (no guarantee of that at all, for starters, the rest of the world has picked up a different strategy)

Everybody knows the feeling when he is ill, especially when you are seriously ill, that in this moment you realize that health is the most important thing in life. Things like the job or other problems just don't interest you that much anymore.
Of course, everyone can talk easily now, as long as hardly anyone is affected. Things would change very quickly if 10-15% of those who are ill actually had to be hospitalized. Things like the economy, money and jobs would then very quickly fall behind in personal importance. What I mean to say is that when you are well, your priorities are quite different compared to when your health is poor.

If anything I would attribute it to the virus circulating longer in Italian parts of Switzerland than German parts (right next to Italy after all and same language). Same with French. It takes time for people to actually die from the virus, so deaths play a kind of catch-up with case counts.
For example, look at Germany.
Case fatality rate
13th 0.22%
20th 0.34%
Today 0.58%

Member

And if the government wouldn't do it, the virus would eventually do it anyway. People are being infected, some of them or their relatives are dying and suddenly everyone is complaining about the government that is just watching.

No matter how you look at it, there is simply no black or white or perfect solution here. You just have to accept that.

Member

Imagine living such a free and privileged life that being told you should stay home and self isolate is akin to being "enslaved". We are in the middle of the worst pandemic the world has seen in over a century, but God forbid someone tells electoral demon to stay home folks. Muh freedoms!

Member

Imagine living such a free and privileged life that being told you should stay home and self isolate is akin to being "enslaved". We are in the middle of the worst pandemic the world has seen in over a century, but God forbid someone tells electoral demon to stay home folks. Muh freedoms!

Member

Germany has universal healthcare, too. Not only is their health system the best in Europe, but every of their citizen has access to it and is covered, whether you are rich or poor, with or without a job.

Member

Basically New York is the new Wuhan. Wonder how they manage the crisis on a restiction / mobility level. Does airports are still open? can you travel from New York to Chicago a this moment? By example.

Banned

Imagine living such a free and privileged life that being told you should stay home and self isolate is akin to being "enslaved". We are in the middle of the worst pandemic the world has seen in over a century, but God forbid someone tells electoral demon to stay home folks. Muh freedoms!

I was not name-calling, but making a judgement of your intelligence. Call it what you want

15-20% of people get severe symptoms, whether they die or not. Many of them may incur lasting lung damage, we don't know. Even the "mild symptoms" may include anything up to bilateral interstitial pneumonia. Have you ever had that? It's not pleasant.

10-15% have to be admitted to hospital, which in turn limits the capacity of some hospitals. This isn't even about death rates.

Triage has already been done in some hospitals, which means that the hospital staff determines who is ventilated and who is not and therefore possibly dies. This is a fact. Period.
If you want that scenario in almost every hospital, you don't do a complete lockdown. It doesn't take much intelligence to realize that this would lead to extreme friction between the population and the politicians.

Honestly, I don't want to offend anyone, but anyone who does not recognize these clearly demonstrable and comprehensible connections and considers the current measures to be over-the-top is a complete idiot.

It is only for a bit though. Apparently only 20% of cases need ICU with a roughly 3% mortality rate. But if you have 20% of 10 million all at the same time, then it is almost certain that the ICUs nationwide will be swamped, and the mortality rate rises from 3% to say 10%. I thought that this was known?

How would you feel if your parents or immediate family needed ICU, but there wasn't any places or equipment to give them the care that they needed?

Banned

Imagine living such a free and privileged life that being told you should stay home and self isolate is akin to being "enslaved". We are in the middle of the worst pandemic the world has seen in over a century, but God forbid someone tells electoral demon to stay home folks. Muh freedoms!

Yeah, keep believing what the media is telling you blindlessly withouth questioning anything. Be an obedient little fella and believe in everything you see on the news.
I'm not saying you're wrong and that I'm right. Questioning things is healthy. Being mindlessly obedient and believing everything there's on the news isn't.

Member

Pure conjecture here: I've been thinking a lot about how our president is handling this and I understand that he is trying to keep panic down although I'm not sure he's doing it to save lives but to help the economy.

My thought is that him going on camera saying that he hopes to have any ban lifted by Easter is going to bite him in the ass big time. It seems like that was directed at southern states and states that have a high go-to-church population. These also seem to be the states that have not even begun to or have barely started testing. Also in poorer states that seem to favor Trump more they have a population that doesn't travel as much. I have a feeling that the states will start to get hit really hard right around the time that Easter is to take place as the virus starts to reach them.

... and he cannot lie

Science: do it. Iceland has decided to jump right into proper scientific methodology in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than "panic now and evaluate later." The country, which has followed similar social distancing strategies as other European nations, has been conducting a random...

cleantechnica.com

These results echo the results of another statistically helpful case. The small Italian town of Vo is where the virus was first identified in Italy. All 3,300 people living there were tested after being put into lockdown. A total of 66 people, 3% of the population, tested positive for the virus. Perhaps most importantly, most of the infected had no symptoms. After two weeks of self-isolation, 6 people still tested positive but were without symptoms, meaning that prevalence of the virus had dropped by 90% (from 66 people to just 6 people) and all symptoms of the virus were gone.

Interesting that 6% of the population was infected. Is 6% of the world infected now? Not sure about that. Another interesting fact, 90% were symptom free after 2 weeks.

BuzzFeed adds: “A study published on Monday in the magazine Science found that for every confirmed case of the virus there are likely another five to 10 people with undetected infections in the community. The scientists, which based their model on data from China, reported that these often milder and less infectious cases are behind nearly 80% of new cases.”

So 75K in the US can really be 375K to 750K in actuallity if we go by this study. Bad news yes, but good news is that almost all of those will survive and end up being immune in 2-4 weeks. Bad news is that still comes out to 10-40K deaths depending on CFR.

Member

Yeah, keep believing what the media is telling you blindlessly withouth questioning anything. Be an obedient little fella and believe in everything you see on the news.
I'm not saying you're wrong and that I'm right. Questioning things is healthy. Being mindlessly obedient and believing everything there's on the news isn't.

Who said I am being mindlessly obedient? I was responding specifically to your cringe inducing overreaction to what is fast becoming standard protocol across the world. What you described in your message can be explained using a rational and logical thought process. This isnt the government stormtroopers coming to take away your freedoms, they were checking to make sure you weren't some random jamoke out fuckin around.

In fact at the end of my message I even said the time to be truly concerned for your rights and freedoms may be coming later on. I am well aware that this whole situation is ripe for abuse. But your situation isn't it. So you might as well drop the whole "but you're a mindless sheep!" schtick. It isnt impressing anyone.

Member

What annoys me the most is the way that the alarm bells in January were ignored by nearly all the governments worldwide.

Look at the timeline, January China announces a new strain SARS outbreak. Within days it locks down an entire province of 50 million people, and there is NO UN coordinated response spoken about. The US (well everyone knows that Trump has diminished America's leadership position so that it is almost nonexistent anymore, but something should have happened), allies and friendly nations didn't discuss a coordinated response, and the EU did exactly the same.... fuck all.

When you have a look at China in January, see the way the Chinese authorities reacted and then you realise just how many flights had been in and out of China since the beginning of the year, EVERY government has demonstrated nothing but complacence! We dodged a bullet with the first SARS outbreak.. This time, our luck ran out. Due to their complacence and their putting the economy first attitude, the costs once this calms down will be enormous. I am seriously expecting taxation to rise to levels not sen in decades. Most probably to levels that we on here have only ever winced at when reading about.

A coordinated response could have meant that the EU or the US went into immediate lockdown and frontier closures as soon as the first cases were reported. Complete with guaranteed assistance from other nations once the outbreak had been contained. Instead, they did nothing, talked about nothing, let it get a foothold and still did nothing in fear of damaging the economy until it was too late. Now it is everyone for themselves, with like I said massive economical damage worldwide thrown in for good measure.

But that is not all. Once individual countries start bringing things under control like China and South Korea have plus Hong Kong (I will come back to HK in a sec), the frontiers will have to be controlled with an iron rod until a vaccine has been found or other countries can demonstrate that they eradicated it or a medicine is available that renders it nothing more than a common cold. Going back to HK, they got it sorted, then opened the borders, and people brought it again. They have imposed strict quarantines since. China and South Korea also have strict quarantines in place to. All other countries are going to have to do the same. In the EU, the freedom of movement will HAVE to be stopped also. The risk is too high.

The turnover of the health sector was about US$368.78 billion (€287.3 billion) in 2010, equivalent to 11.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and about US$4,505 (€3,510) per capita.[7] According to the World Health Organization, Germany's health care system was 77% government-funded and 23% privately funded as of 2004.[8] In 2004 Germany ranked thirtieth in the world in life expectancy (78 years for men). It had a very low infant mortality rate (4.7 per 1,000 live births), and it was tied for eighth place in the number of practicing physicians, at 3.3 per 1,000 persons. In 2001 total spending on health amounted to 10.8 percent of gross domestic product.[9]

According to the Euro health consumer index, which placed it in seventh position in its 2015 survey, Germany has long had the most restriction-free and consumer-oriented healthcare system in Europe. Patients are allowed to seek almost any type of care they wish whenever they want it.[10] The governmental health system in Germany is currently keeping a record reserve of more than €18 billion which makes it one of the healthiest healthcare systems in the world.[11]

Member

Use China for an idea or work the numbers yourself to come up with a reasonable estimation.

China have started relaxing and opening up again after 7 to 8 weeks.

If you look at the figures, and work to the worst case scenarios using the available information, you can come to the following conclusions imo

Average incubation time 6-7 days (some outliers have been 14 apparently)
Average illness time 14 days
I have read conflicting lengths on the time that you stay contagious upto 14 days after you have recovered.
Adding it all together, it is over 30 days just there. Put that into weeks and correlate that with China's lockdown, and I think that we can easily assume that a lockdown with social distancing that is respected should equate to a minimum of 6 weeks.

Not ideal, but if that is what is needed for the virus to run out of hosts and burn itself out then so be it.